We have a project that is required by convenants to put irrigation on the front and side of the building that faces the street, but not the rest. So, of course, we will only be installing irrigation only in those areas. The landscape plan includes a native species grass mix for some of the site and mixed trees/shrubs/groundcover for the rest of the site. My question is about how to fill out the calculation tables. I think it makes sense to put all of the landscaping (irrigated and non-irrigated) in both the baseline case and design case. For the baseline case, we would show the whole site being irrigated and for the design case, we would show the decision to eliminate the irrigation on certain portions of the site. The landscape designer/installer disagrees. He said that based on his experience with another project, we should only be including the areas to be irrigated in both the baseline and design case. This doesn't seem right to me being that all of the landscaped areas (irrigated or not) are within the LEED project boundary. So, who's right? Any ideas?
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Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11475 thumbs up
February 17, 2012 - 5:37 pm
Leah, this may seem like a head-scratcher, but I think the designer is right. Basically you are looking to earn the credit by reducing the irrigated area. If you look at the credit language, that is not an accepted means to demonstrating savings. LEED doesn't want to incentivize adding hardscape to reduce irrigation. Also, it would be easy to say "we COULD have irrigated XYZ but didn't," and earn the credit that way -- but who is to say what you could have done? It's a bit arbitrary. Look at the credit language for acceptable ways to earn the credit.
Adrienn Gelesz
LEED APABUD Engineering Ltd.
48 thumbs up
September 6, 2012 - 11:23 am
Hi,
as I understand Leah's apporach is not to include more hardscape but to include xeriscape, or vegetation that needs no irrigation. Based on this I can agree with her approach that the plants that need no water are definitely better than plants that need some water. I haven't tried this approach with any projects but we are having a project now where the same things are considered. I woudl be happy to know what strategy Leah chose and whether she succeded.
Adrienn Gelesz
LEED APABUD Engineering Ltd.
48 thumbs up
September 24, 2012 - 3:54 am
Hi, I just looked at the LEED interpretations 7/6/2005 ID# 6039 and 3/24/2004 ID# 731. It seems like there is a bit of a discrepancy between the two interpretations, but 6039 seems to validate the approach.